"I wanted to be present by your side".

It is a President of the Republic with drawn features, monopolized by the Russian war in Ukraine, who inaugurated the Agricultural Show on Saturday morning.

"Thank you for what you are doing", "good luck", he received as words of welcome, in the middle of an assembly made up of professional representatives.

During this express visit, before the opening of the show to the public, he was accompanied by his Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie.

Relations between the presidential majority and the agricultural world represented by the FNSEA have warmed up in five years, and especially since the arrival of this agricultural engineer at the ministry of rue de Varenne in July 2020.

President Emmanuel Macron visiting the Salon de l'Agriculture to meet union representatives on February 26, 2022 in Paris Ludovic MARIN POOL / AFP

He "knew how to talk to them, adopt the words they wanted to hear", remarks the sociologist François Purseigle.

The researcher sees in Julien Denormandie "a trump card in the game of Emmanuel Macron" who has "implemented a strategy of conquest in relation to this electorate which was no longer acquired on the right".

In 2017, "it didn't start very well", recalls political scientist Eddy Fougier.

"A bit like in American comedies, it starts badly and then at the end there is the great rapprochement", continues Mr. Fougier.

"There was an entry into the five-year term with very anxiety-provoking themes for farmers", says Dominique Chargé, who defends the interests of the 2,200 French agricultural cooperatives.

He thinks in particular of the will of the Head of State in 2017 to release "at the latest in three years" from glyphosate, weedkiller as controversial as it is effective.

France finally just restricted the uses of the herbicide.

The "lessons" of the president

The majority agricultural world, which has little taste for the presence in the government of Nicolas Hulot, is also jostled by a river speech in 2017.

"We must collectively rethink a new agricultural France", launches Mr. Macron in front of the professionals gathered on the wholesale market of Rungis.

He suggests "stopping productions, whether poultry or pork, which no longer correspond to our tastes, to our needs".

The president of the FNSEA Christiane Lambert, a pig breeder, explains that she has difficulty in cashing in on the "lessons" of the president.

Farmers accuse him of a form of double talk as they face competition from products from countries that are less careful in terms of health and the environment and that the deputies ratify in 2019 the free trade treaty between Europe and Canada (Ceta).

"Talking greening, receiving (at the Assembly the muse of the climate fight) Greta Thunberg the day we sign the Ceta. We were in major political inconsistency", estimates the president of the National Bovine Federation, Bruno Dufayet.

According to Eddy Fougier, "we are starting to no longer look at each other like earthenware dogs" in 2019, when the executive takes up the term "agribashing" which is used by farmers as well to denounce the intrusions of anti-meat activists into farms than the questioning of pesticides.

The government even decides to create a specific cell within the gendarmerie, called Demeter, whose activities to prevent "actions of an ideological nature" have recently been deemed illegal by the administrative courts.

The Ministers of the Interior and of Agriculture have just appealed.

Farmers are generally grateful to the executive for trying to improve their incomes through the Egalim and Egalim 2 laws, reforming crop insurance, and allowing sugar beet growers to reuse insecticides harmful to bees in order to preserve production.

Or even to have defended, especially since the health crisis, the “quality of the French model” and the need for “reconquest” in the face of imports.

The Confederation paysanne, on the other hand, draws up a "completely negative" balance sheet.

"The speech that Emmanuel Macron made at Rungis seemed to lay the foundations for questioning the agricultural model. Five years later, we have the impression of having been rolled in flour", says Nicolas Girod, door- word of the union opposed to intensive agriculture.

“We will continue to use chemicals to produce more at less cost and to be competitive with other countries in the world,” laments the Jura breeder.

© 2022 AFP